Millennium Management has recruited the former global head of direct execution services at UBS, the latest in a series of high-profile hires by Izzy Englander’s $21.8 billion hedge fund.

Owain Self is to join Millennium later this year and will be based in the US, according to three people familiar with the situation. Self left UBS last week after nearly 15 years at the bank, as first reported by Financial News. He is on gardening leave until mid-June, one person said.

In an internal memo sent last week regarding his departure, Roger Anerella, UBS's global head of electronic, automated, and client-facing trading technology, said the firm was "look[ing] forward to working with him as a client".

Financial News also reported last month that James Ter Haar, a former partner at credit hedge fund Lucidus, was joining Millennium’s London office in September. Ter Haar has been tasked with hiring three or four people and will manage a credit portfolio between $350 million and $450 million.

Millennium was set up by Englander in 1989 and has more than 1,400 employees, according to its website.

Self has twice been named on Financial News's Rising Stars of Trading & Technology, most recently in 2013. He first joined UBS in 2000 and became a managing director at just 28. In 2004, he was named head of European algorithmic trading and three years later was given the additional role of co-head of European automated trading. He was appointed global head of algorithmic trading in 2010 and global co-head of direct execution in 2011.

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His departure from UBS followed that of Phil Allison, the bank's global head of cash equities and its head of equities for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Allison had first joined the Swiss bank as a graduate trainee in 1997.

Allison and Self helped to grow UBS's equities business into one of the largest in Europe. According to figures released by data provider Markit in January, the bank was the third-most active broker of European equities on behalf of clients last year, with a turnover of €949.1 billion. It lagged Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Merrill Lynch.